Mu Tag: World's Smallest Loss Prevention Device

Mon Oct 23 '17 Announcement
over 8 years ago – Mon, Oct 23, 2017 at 12:57:44 PM

Hello from the beautiful valley of Boulder, Colorado,

We are back with our October monthly update! Thank you all for your patience along the way. This community has been incredibly supportive to us and it's endlessly appreciated. Thank you, thank you, thank you!!!

We are committed to updating you all in the most transparent way every month!

What challenges did we face last month?

RF performance issue: Our Mu tag had RF performance issue. Our entire engineering team worked hard with RF experts at the University of Colorado Boulder. We created three visions of PCB designs and manufactured with our assembly partner at Golden, Colorado. Currently, we are going through a systematic and robust RF performance testing.

Android developer quit: Our Android developer quit last month after he worked on developing the Android app for one month. It has been extremely stressful for us to face that. It certainly delayed the delivery of our Android app. It's our fault to not foreseen that delay.

Manufacturing specialist consultant moved out: As you all known, our team is very inexperienced with the manufacturing world. Back in June, we hired an experienced manufacturing consultant to lead our suppliers' conversations. We learned a lot along the way. However, we couldn't afford the manufacturing consultant service anymore. We are hustling extremely hard to fight the battle.

Industry designer took a full-time job somewhere else: The industrial designer who we hire to do the Mu tag, Mu charger, Mu hub and Mu fob enclose drawing, material selection, plastic molders selection just took a high paid full-time job somewhere else. This is totally unexpected and frustrating. Somehow, we convinced her to continue finishing those work as much as she can while she works full-time somewhere else.
 

Mu tag and Mu charger Beta Batch Delivery in November

Despite all of those challenges, we are confident that we can deliver 100 unit of Beta Mu tags and Mu chargers, along with iOS MVP app to selected backers on November 15th - November 23th.

The purpose of the 100 Beta units is to make sure we can fix any major kinks in the design (hardware, firmware or software) before we go full-blown production and build a product truly what you all want, not just we want.

Beta selection is still in process. We need more testers, especially people in greater Denver - Boulder area and the Bay Area. If you in those areas, feel free to email ([email protected]), message or Slack us directly! We would love to meet you directly in person and hand the Beta Mu tag and Mu charger for you to test.

The selected Beta testers will receive those testing units for free. However, it's so crucial for us to select the right backers who can represent the backers' community and will spend a decent amount of time to test products and provide valuable feedbacks. The selected Beta testers should willing to have a 30-minute phone call or video call with our team to provide feedbacks.

We will email the selected backers to confirm the shipping addresses. We will also provide shipping tracking numbers.  

What's the story with Android app?

Since our Android developer quit, we are looking for a way to deliver the Android app in an affordable way.

Currently, our two part-time hardware engineers (one PhD. candidate and one Master of EE) are not being paid at all. Another full-time iOS developer and full-time CEO is being paid $12.5 per hours, which translated into $2,000 per month. It's close the minimum you need to survive in Boulder, CO. In fact, all of our full-time team members work way more than 40 hours per week, at least 60 hours per week. We understand this is not a job. It's a promise we made for all of you guys! It's the vision we all believed in! This is why we worked so hard every day despite so many things went wrong.

We consider hiring an Android app development company oversea for saving money. It definitely has pros and cons. The quotes we received range from $7,000 to $34,000.  We are still evaluating the options and will update you guys in the future. We are happy to listen to your opinions.

How long will it take to roll out all orders?

As with most crowdfunding products, fulfillment timing is sort of an unknown until the point where the company actually starts fulfilling. We've done our best to prep our assembly partner, fulfillment partner, and shipping partners but we're sure we'll have some growing pains as we move ahead. Accordingly, we aren't 100% certain how long it will take at this point. As always, we pledge to be transparent every step of the way.

Over the past one month, we negotiate the rate with 6 different fulfillment centers which we personally visited. We got the best rate with EPIC fulfillment in Broomfield, Colorado. It's only 20-minute drive from our home office in Boulder.

When will I receive the backer survey?

We will send out the backer survey to you over email next few days. We will update you before sending it out. More details are coming!

CES 2018 Eureka Park show: We are invited to present our products at CES 2018! It's a great opportunity for us! We would love to see you guys there!

We understand and feel the frustration from some backers. Please believe in us! We think of delivering the products to you every day! In fact, we turned our living room into a home office! From the monument we wake up, we work on this project! Before we go to sleep, we are worried about if we are doing good enough!

We definitely not plan to cheat on anyone and take your money for personal gain! I have taken not any vacation trips or even any family visit for the past 5 months! We don't have a weekend off either.

Our team is hyper-focused on delivering the product every day! We are open for all feedbacks! We sincerely appreciate your kind support and trust. Thank you all!

Wed Aug 30 '17 Announcement
over 8 years ago – Wed, Aug 30, 2017 at 03:33:30 PM

We did it! In the final days of our campaign we doubled our original funding goal, and it is all thanks to you guys! Our team could not be more ecstatic about the outpouring of support from our backers - we are more energized than ever to get Mu tag in yours hands so that you can share our excitement.

As you may have noticed, we have extended into Indiegogo's InDemand platform. This effectively functions as an E-commerce platform for us to grow our initial sales. Fear not though, our loyal early backers received far larger discounts on products and will have their order 2-3 months before anyone else! After all, it is because of you guys that we are now able to turn our dream into a reality. There is no one we would rather share the success with!

Feel free to reach out to us with any questions, comments or concerns via email at [email protected] or on our Slack channel. We'd love to hear from you! As always, thank you for your ongoing support.

Cheers,
- The Informu Team

Fri Aug 4 '17 Announcement
over 8 years ago – Fri, Aug 04, 2017 at 02:06:55 PM

We are excited to announce that the winner of our Cash Prize Contest is Shannon Fowler of Altamonte Springs, FL. Shannon will be receiving $500 just for sharing our campaign with her friends and family on social media! If you'd like the chance to win big, stay tuned for our next contest beginning next week! 

Thu Aug 3 '17 Announcement
over 8 years ago – Thu, Aug 03, 2017 at 03:44:27 PM

Manufacturer Selection:

            In recent weeks, our engineering team has toured numerous U.S. manufactures specializing in everything from molding and assembly to PCB manufacturing and packaging design. We are happy to announce that the Mu tag will be entirely made in the U.S., with most of our manufacturing partners located in our home state of Colorado! This gives us a greater sense of companionship with these partners, increased control over manufacturer audits, and a significantly shorter lead time on component sourcing and fulfillment. In short, this makes delivering on time much easier, and insures a higher quality product for our backers.

Single Piece Design:

            We have decided to reiterate the Mu tag as a single module. This is primarily due to engineering blocks that would delay our manufacturing and delivery timeline up to three months. This change comes with a lot of benefits, and enables our engineering team to incorporate numerous improvements. Such improvements include better water resistance, longer battery life, and an even smaller form factor. Although this change means that the Mu tag batteries will no longer be replaceable, it will allow us to incorporate a larger rechargeable battery with significantly increased battery life.
            The physical design remains practically unchanged, with the only functional difference being that the Mu tag will not separate from the battery unit. To accommodate this design change, slight alterations have been made to the Mu charger and Mu hub. We understand that this is a noticeable change in our product offering and that it will effect a decent portion of our backers’  preorders. Due to this, we will be refunding backers for any additional Mu tag batteries purchased.

Conclusion:
            In short, this past month has presented several challenges regarding manufacturing and development, but our team has successfully navigated them and is still on track to deliver our ground-breaking product this December. The decision to alter our two-piece design will allow us to incorporate an array of new features and will allow us to fulfill our preorders on schedule. With beta units only a month away, and full scale manufacturing just around the corner, or team is more excited than ever before to bring the Mu tag to life. With that in mind, we would like to thank each and every one of you for believing in our product, and more importantly, in us.

Sincerely,
- The Informu Team

Wed Jul 26 '17 Announcement
over 8 years ago – Wed, Jul 26, 2017 at 04:16:26 PM

We have eight days left and we are working hard on our end trying to get the Mu Tags ready to ship.  Stay tuned for more updates. 

Refer a Friend and Earn up to $5 Off Your Mu Tag!

We wanted to remind you guys, that you can get up to $25 off your Mu Tag order by referring your friends and family to join the Mu Tag movement. 

To learn more & get started on earning credits, click on the link below based on where you are currently viewing this message:

IF YOU ARE VIEWING THIS ON INDIEGOGO:

Click here to visit the Mu Tag Thank You Program. Your unique URL will populate automatically if you are logged into your Indiegogo account. 

IF YOU ARE VIEWING THIS IN YOUR EMAIL: 

Click here to visit Indiegogo first, then the Thank You Program (Indiegogo link in step above). You must be logged in to Indiegogo and visit it first to pre-load your unique URL to receive credits.

Best, 

The Mu Tag Team